For almost his entire career, T. Coraghessan Boyle has written "historical fiction." The Road to Wellville and Riven Park, his

best-known novels, focused on the excesses, compulsions, and obsessions of wealthy Americans at the turn of the century. The

short story "Captured by the Indians" revises Boyle’s characteristically historical mode of social critique and applies it to the

news of the past year. Boyle links a bizarre ethical theory, an infamous serial killer, and an anachronistic text containing "true

stories" of white settlers "captured by the Indians" to tell the story of a young couple about to become parents despite their

emotional and ideological distance from one another.

The story opens with the couple, Melanie and Sean, attending a lecture by Dr. Toni Brinsley-Shneider, who spouts

questionable theories concerning the fundamental disposability of human life. Melanie finds these theories appalling, especially

because she has just learned she's pregnant. Sean is a believable caricature of an aloof, ineffectual grad student, smugly

approving the bioethicist’s disturbing assertions, unaware that his girlfriend is pregnant.

Dr. Toni Brinsley-Shneideris a parody version of the bioethicist Peter Singer, whose controversial theories have received

a lot of attention in the press recently. Boyle’s "train killer" is based on Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, who

allegedly traveled the country killing randomly selected strangers on or near trains. These contemporary references would

be no more than amusing were it not that Boyle has made them the background and context for the story of Melanie and

Sean’s strained relationship.

Boyle’s confident writing, his sense of humor, and his remarkable ability to connect his fictional characters

with current events make this work a potent socio-political satire.